


dear friend (I write for fear the end is coming soon)

by Wallyallens



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Love Letters, Terminal Illnesses, basically s7 if mulder faked his abducted because he was dying, end of s7 au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 00:24:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: End of s7/s8 AU, where the reason Mulder had been secretly travelling to a hospital for a year is because his experience with the alien writing has left him with complications: a degenerative brain condition. He fakes his abduction because he doesn't want anyone (Scully) to have to watch him die, but, Scully was never one to take 'abducted by aliens' as an answer.





	dear friend (I write for fear the end is coming soon)

**Author's Note:**

> never written for x files or msr before, so, let me know how it is. just finished my bingewatch of the show. obviously, tw for terminal illness.

 

“I’m not going to risk losing you.”

The words are true. His intentions are not. Mulder tries to convince himself that it is not a lie – not exactly. Not as long as the words are the truth: perhaps not the truth he had set out to discover, but the one he had found along the way regardless. In so many ways, she _was_ his truth. And after all she had been through, he never again wanted Scully to be in danger, not chasing the truth, and certainly not chasing _him_.

Scully blinks up at him, and his heart breaks a little, just looking at her.

There are tears in her eyes as Scully steps forward until she is folded into his arms, chin resting on his shoulder and hands buried into his hair. She fits perfectly, tucked up beside him. His tiny partner. Despite himself, Mulder felt his lips tug upwards at the thought, eyes closing of their own accord as he holds Scully tightly.

_This is the last time you’ll hold her_ , a voice inside him says. Mulder does his best to ignore it.

All he can see is the red of her hair, and he feels the warmth of her breath on his ear when Scully speaks: “I won’t let you go alone.”

Mulder’s eyes squeeze shut tighter at her words. They constitute another spanner in the works; another crack in the plan he had thought so perfect just the night before. Now, doubt pricks at his mind, unravelling a chord strung the day he had met her, a red string tying them together. A part of him knows that this is wrong: that he would be losing her all the same. A different part argues that at least this way it will be on his own terms. At least this way . . . she doesn’t have to watch him die.

Tonight, he will vanish into thin air, and Scully won’t have to suffer for his choices, not again. This is be the last time they will meet – he had decided weeks ago that it was better for him to leave than to stay here and cause her more pain. Mulder had put together a plan to disappear in a way that meant that even if she searched for him, she will be looking in the wrong direction. Scully will look for answers in the sky, and within a few months – he will be in the ground.

Because tonight, in a forest in Oregon, Fox Mulder will go missing. He will never be seen alive again.

*

_Scully,_

_This letter doesn’t seem like enough to explain everything to you. But I remembered that when you were in the hospital and afraid, you wrote a letter to me. It said a lot of things we never managed to say face to face. Not even afterwards. I should have said the things I kept to myself, Scully – but after all you had been through, I didn’t want anything to change, not again. I thought that if we could stay exactly as we were, then everything would be just fine, sitting in that basement with you. I could have spent my entire life that way. We never realised how good we had it, those first few months together; when it was just road trips and chasing monsters. That was before the monsters came into our homes, and our lives. Before your cancer. Before ~~I fe~~ Well, before a lot of things. But although I can no longer recall the words, I still remember that you wrote me a letter, and that I understood afterwards. I hope that you do, too._

_I spent years alone in that office. The early days were a mess. I’d spend days chasing stories about U.F.O’s and little green men and end up with nothing to show for it – I’d probably still have nothing, if it weren’t for you. Your science opened doors for me, into fact and truth, not just vague hopes to find some great secret that could solve everything in the universe. I needed to believe that the truth was out there. And I was arrogant enough to believe that I was meant to find it. I know now that such knowledge does not exist. There is no magical truth that can save mankind - not out there. But there is truth to be found. It is a hard truth to learn, especially for me, but truth nonetheless. I spent too long searching the stars for answers without realising that we had already found so much down here. There are secrets kept in the shadows about extraterrestrial life, and cover-ups, and government conspiracies. We have brought some of this truth into the light. You brought me into the light. Out of that basement, and into the world again. I never did thank you for that._

_I suppose I should begin by telling you my truth. After my coma; after reading the alien writing, I began to experience periods of memory loss and black out. I tried to ignore the signs, although they were everywhere, because I wanted to move past that event and for things to return to the way they had been before. I wanted a rest in the relentless series of tragedies and loss of the past few years. I needed to pretend for a while that things were okay. I think we both did. But things didn’t get better as I had hoped – in fact, they began to get worse. When I found myself unable to remember details of a case, or put together my own scattered recollections of time we spent together - information that we needed and that our lives were at risk without - I knew I had to face the truth: that something was very wrong with me. I went to see a doctor – and forgive me that it wasn’t you. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, Scully – I just didn’t want to burden you with any more of the weight that should always have been mine to carry. You had already lost so much, fighting for my cause. _

_What the doctor discovered was worse than I had imagined. Degenerative brain disease. Or something like it – the doc, she said she had never seen anything like it before. Almost like it was out-of-this-world. I laughed at that for both of us. The doc spoke a lot about my memory fading over time and the eventual loss of motor function and skills, but you were always better with that side of things. The words were lost to me, but their meaning was clear enough – I was dying. I was dying, but in a cruel twist of fate, I would lose everything I was before I did. My memories. My mind. And you._

_I don’t think now that I could ever forget you. But I will. Although such a thought seems impossible, one day soon I won’t even remember your name._

_I will not be myself by the time I go._

_And I couldn’t let you watch me die, Scully. That’s why I left. Well, it’s a part of the reason. For the past year, I have been travelling regularly to see a doctor who has been monitoring my deterioration and studying my case. Half of me hoped that she would be able to find a cure. I had good days, and I had bad days. But the bad days now outweigh the good, and are getting worse – a part of me wanted to fight this until the end, to rail and rage against that good night; to be the stubborn ass I have been all too often and refuse to see sense and accept my condition. That part of me would have stayed working on the x-files until the day my heart forgot how to beat. I always expected that I would die on this job – I thought it would be worth it, dying for the truth. Or for you. I imagined it being my back to the wall, spitting in the face of death, maybe taking out a few of the bad ones with me. But the man who would have done that is not the one I am now; as with so much in my life, it came down to you. I have a partner now. Somebody it is my job to protect. In recent weeks, I have not been the partner that I should have been._

_When I found myself unable to remember the make and model of the car we had rented on a trip, or the face of suspect I had spotted at a crime scene, or the room number of whatever motel we were staying at – I knew that I could no longer continue to work, or be the partner that you deserved. I could not do my job anymore. If I continued to try, I could be putting you in danger. And I didn’t lie to you: I won’t risk losing you. I would still die for you, but I won’t live putting you in danger, my own fantasies of heroic grandeur be damned. I will die quietly, and nobody else will suffer for me. I’m tired all the time now, Scully. I don’t have it in me to fight it anymore. I guess that makes me a coward after all._

_Today is my first day at the hospital I have chosen to die in – it specialises with patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s, and they have accepted me despite my condition being unknown to medicine. It’s almost nice here. As good a place to die as any. I felt at a loss today, and all I could think was that I wished I could talk to you. I hope that when you read this, you will at least understand why I chose to leave, and know to stop looking for me. Don’t waste your life in that office like I did. This is your chance to get out and live that life you always wanted, with the white picket fence instead of a motel room, and a career instead of running around in the dark with me. I wasn’t lying when I told you that there had to be more than this. I hope that one day you will forgive me for keeping this from you. I hope that you can understand **why** I did, if not forgive it. _

_Above all else, I hope that you live a long life, and if you ever do think of the times we spent chasing the truth, that you remember to smile. It was the best of times._

_I will ask my nurse to deliver this letter to you when I die. You deserve to know, but also know that this was my choice, to die and not have you watch me loose first my memories and then the rest of me. There was nothing you could have done to save me more than you already have. You made me better. You made me feel like a person again. I’ve told you before, but not enough. Hopefully enough that you know how much you mean to me._

_If you ever miss me, just look to the stars. You’ll find me there._

_Your friend,_

_Fox Mulder._

_*_

Scully knows what Skinner will say before he even opens his mouth. She sees it in the weight of his steps as he enters the room, as if his shoes were filled with lead. She sees it in the new lines of sleepless nights around his eyes. She sees it there the most, in his gaze: the resignation behind the rims of his glasses, the apology and the determination, frustration and grief and exhaustion rolled into a look. It’s a look she knows well; she has seen it often in the mirror.

“I lost him.”

Mulder is gone.

Missing.

_Abducted_.

It’s like a blow, leaving a hollowness in her chest as all of the breath in her lungs is expelled. She gasps, but the sound is swallowed up by the void of the white hospital room around her, stealing her sorrow. It feels private, even with Skinner there. After all of this time, he feels more like family than the brothers she has not seen in months, and the father whose voice is a distant memory.

Even as her own eyes blur, his are shining with the same loss, and they hold each other together with choked out promises that they will find him.

She tells Skinner that she is pregnant, and the room falls silent again. Her face tries to smile at the words, but the expression crumbles on her face, coming out broken.

Skinner’s face falls slack as his eyes widen, the tears clouding from his face. “I thought you _couldn’t_ . . .”

“So did I.” It hurts. Scully puts a hand over her eyes to try and hold back the flood, but her voice still cracks as she admits, quietly, “-it was supposed to be a miracle.”

In her time of the x-files, Scully had seen things that she would not believe, had she not witnessed them with her own eyes. Even before that, she had always believed in miracles. In all of the stories about martyrdom and wrath in the bible, the ones that stayed with her were the kinder tales of miracles. That was what God was, to her. God is love. A gentler thing.

But she had also seen too much to believe that life was fair. She had seen tragedy, and _true_ evil, and things without a name in light that only exist in the dark. She saw that same darkness seeping in through the cracks of the world. It spread deeper still, sinking down through her skin upon contact and into her belief. She had spent too long in the dark chasing monsters. Sooner or later, of course they would find their way to her door.

Her pregnancy should have been a miracle; but she had seen too much for that, and the small, cynical part of her whispered that she had traded one thing for another, and Mulder was the martyr of her prayers for a child. That she had sacrificed him for the baby now growing inside her. That she had tempted fate in hoping, and now this – this hollowness as she wept in a hospital room and he was gone – this was the price of her miracle.

Scully closes her eyes to let hot tears slip down her face, “This is my fault.”

“Dana-” Skinner is beside her then, and using her first name – she is not an agent and he is not her boss here, he is her friend as he takes her hand between both of his own, squeezing tightly, “-if this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I was there with Mulder and I couldn’t protect him. I _will_ find him, though. I promise you that.”

“ _We_ -” Scully corrects. Her hands shake as she pulls them from his to wipe her eyes, knowing that she needs to be strong now more than ever. For her unborn child, and for Mulder. For herself, too. So she does what she has for years: she sets her jaw and stares the world down. “We will find him. Together. Mulder is my partner . . . he’s my-” she takes a breath, looking Skinner in the eye, “-you know what he is to me.”

“And I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you,” Skinner replies, “so I won’t ask you not to look. But for your own sake, and your child’s – look after yourself, Dana. Stay here until you’re well, and then – then we’ll search for Mulder.”

“That sounds like a better promise,” she agrees. Although it hurts, she forces her lips together in a grim imitation of a smile, grateful beyond words for the support of her friend. “Thank you, sir.”

Skinner mirrors the look back, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder in comfort as he stands to leave.

“Get some sleep, Agent Scully.”

She promises to, but it’s a promise easily broken as night falls around her and Scully lies awake. The beeping of the machines hums with the rhythm of her breathing, but her eyes stay wide open, trained on the window by her bed. From it, she can see the stars. She wonders if Mulder can see them too, wherever he is; staring at the stars he was so fond of, she made a silent promise to keep searching for him, as long as they still shone. Until the heavens themselves fell.

“Goodnight, Mulder,” she says to the stars, “I _will_ see you again.”

It feels like a prophecy.

*

_Scully,_

_I didn’t intend to write to you again. I’ve been at the hospital for just over a month now, and things are more of the same. I forget the name of my nurse often, but the important stuff is all still there. My nurse has suggested that I write down what I remember before it fades -anything important - so I will continue to write letters to you for as long as I am able. Maybe you will read them, or maybe no one will. Maybe you can publish it: **the unlikely memoirs of Spooky Mulder, who believed in the impossible.** I bet the FBI would get a kick out of that, if they didn’t censor it. Could be a real best-seller. Maybe I’ll tell it to the stars, or to your God, if I meet him. When you get to wherever we go next, you can say ‘I told you so’ if you were right._

_I didn’t know where to start, so I thought I would just start at the beginning. There have been two major events in my life that mark a change in direction._

_The first you know. For me, this all began a long time ago when my sister Samantha was abducted from our home, by what I believed to be extra-terrestrial life. That night was once so clear in my mind. I’d see it over and over in my memories, and in my nightmares, but now, the details are unclear. I remember a board game, and that we were arguing about what to watch on tv, although what it is that I was so desperate to see is missing. It seems so redundant now. I remember the light. I remember being paralyzed. I remember my name being called, although I can no longer hear her voice in my head. I never thought that I would miss it._

_For the longest of times, I believed that she could be found. That I could find her. This belief changed the course of my life. This is the first time I can mark a distinct ‘before’ and ‘after’: there was the time before Samantha was abducted, of which I remember very little except I was happy, and took this fact for granted. It is the After that is important in this case. After Samantha was abducted, I spent so many years searching for her that the search became my life – I began to believe not just in life aside from our own in the universe, but in everything. In anything. I grasped at anything I could to prove that the mysteries of the universe held some weight, learning all that I could to this endeavour._

_Eventually, it led me to the FBI, and to the x files - and later, it led me to you. And Scully, you’re the second thing._

_There was a time before I knew you, where I was just alone with my beliefs. And there was a time after. And you may not have believed in all that I did, but you listened all the same, you sat by me on hours-long car rides, you read file after file without complaint. There was a notable before and after you were in my life._

_I didn’t trust you at first. I thought that you were there to spy on me and stop me from finding the truth, but you never once asked me not to believe. It wasn’t long until I trusted you. Our first case, in fact - I know down to the second the moment I knew you had changed everything, Scully. We were in Orgeon, in a graveyard in the middle of the night, and you smiled at me in the rain. It plastered your hair to your face and you didn’t believe any of it, but you smiled anyway. And it had been years since I had smiled on a case, found joy in it, but looking back at you, I couldn’t help but grin back. After that, I was reminded why I was drawn to the x files in the first place – for the damn curiosity of it. _

_You were always so curious about everything, and even though I took the road less travelled and you the straight and narrow path, we were going in the same direction. And it was infectious, your need to know as much as you could; to understand. I learned more by watching you work. You brought the wonder back into my office in the basement._

_It started with Samantha, but it began again when you walked into my office. The details of that first case are hazy now, but I still remember you smiling at me in the rain._

_Your friend, Mulder._

*

“Who’s Scully?”

Mulder flinches into wakefulness at the voice, which he cannot place for a panicked second. He sits straight up, thinking he had fallen asleep on his couch and reaching instinctually for his gun – but his hand closes on empty space as his eyes re-focus on the white room surrounding him. They finally come to rest on the nurse clad in blue, standing by the little desk in the corner of the hospital room – _his_ hospital room. Hammering heartbeats slow in relief as Mulder realises that there is no threat and the memories return to him.

He is in a hospital in Georgia. He is safe – as safe as a dying man can be, anyway.

Wiping a heavy hand over his eyes, Mulder slumps back into his pillows as he wakes more fully. There is sunlight streaming through the window beside the desk, bright enough that it must only be mid-afternoon, meaning that he had yet again fallen asleep in the middle of the day. He was tired a lot more often now. And it wasn’t like he had anything to stay awake for anymore, aside from his letters to Scully –

Remembering the question, his attention turns back to the nurse, who was still looking at the pages scattered across his desk, covered in ink, and on every one, the same name.

“Scully?” he repeated, blinking. “Scully’s my . . . she’s my partner. _Was_ my partner. Before . . .”

As Mulder broke off, he waves around, indicating the room they were in. The nurse nods with a knowing smile, the kind that speaks of sympathy and makes him want to scream, stacking his pages into a more organised pile. “I understand. You’ve been together a long time?”

“Forever, it feels like-” his lips twist into a smile, “-but in reality it’s only been seven years. It’s strange to think. I feel sometimes like she’s been there my entire life – or at least the best parts of it, the important ones. The ones that count.”

“Will she be visiting, this Scully?”

Mulder shakes his head. The moment of nostalgia shattered, he looks down to his hands tied together in his lap, “No . . . Scully can’t be here. I don’t want her to see me like this. That’s what those are for.”

He jerks his head towards the pages beneath her fingers. The nurse’s attention returns to them momentarily before turning to watch him from the corner of her eyes.

“I know it’s none of my business, Mr. Mulder. But you’ve been here for three months now without a single visitor. Your illness – your condition, it’s getting worse now-”

“I know,” he interrupts, closing his eyes. Mulder’s hands clench into fists at his sides. For the past few weeks, he had spent most of his waking moments steadily filling the blank pages they gave to him with a stream of words, of memories, crammed into the paper before they are gone forever. Already, some feel like old sepia photographs, dulled and fading; the colour gone. “That’s why it’s important that I get it all down while I can. Before it goes.”

Feeling restless suddenly, as if his memories were grains of sand slipping through his outstretched fingers, Mulder felt the desperate need to write again. To capture the sand, the memories, on the page as best he can, as if each second stole another precious moment that he would not get back.

He _needed_ to keep going.

Trying to move quickly, he swings his legs over the side of the bed, only to stumble as he tries to reach the desk. Mulder’s legs gave out beneath him the minute his bare feet touch the freezing tiled floor. That’s the other annoying part of his progressing illness – even as his mind fails, his body follows not far behind. Now, he could barely walk some days, and only left his room if in a wheelchair, not that he wanted to. Where would he go? All he did was move from his bed to his desk, fighting the urge to walk down the corridor to the pay phone and call the one person whose voice he ached to hear on the long nights where he didn’t even have nightmares anymore – the memories were going. Some days he couldn’t even remember what Samantha had looked like, let alone what happened that night. It was a blessing and a curse, this business of dying.

“Shit-”

He swears as he feels his knee’s buckle – but the nurse is by his side in an instant, holding him up. That just makes him angrier, although Mulder isn’t sure why anymore.

“Don’t!” he barks, tearing his arm away and leaning heavily back on the bed. Mulder’s eyes are fixed on the desk in determination; it is only a few feet away, but it may as well be a moon away, for his inability to reach it. “- I can still walk, damn it. I can still do that.”

“Mr. Mulder-”

“ _No_. No, no – I can do this. I – I can get there.”

_No one gets there alone_.

Her voice is in his head still, the only one not eroded yet by time. Scully’s voice remains with him, clear as a bell, calm as the sea. She’s with him like a keychain in his pocket, or a chain around his neck. Her voice tells him to be reasonable. He hates it. He would rather die that second than face the day he is without it.

Mulder closes his eyes, then says – “I’m sorry. It’s just – I should be able to do this.”

The nurse doesn’t lie and say that it’s okay, and he is grateful for that. Nothing is okay about this. Instead, she takes him by the arm and says, “Let’s get you over to that desk.”

The nurse helps him to his feet, and they shuffle over to the wooden chair and the desk. Mulder sits, as she places another blank sheet of paper in front of him – he fumbles around the desk for a moment, looking for his pen. It isn’t anywhere in sight; he must have lost it again.

Just as a weary sigh leaves him, the nurse un-clips the pen from her pocket and hands it over to him. It is a simple gift, a small kindness, but the only thing he was clinging to was writing these letters to Scully, so it brings tears to his eyes. Mulder swallows hard and chokes out his thanks. A hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes for a second – right where Scully’s head had rested, the last time he had seen her – before it was gone.

The nurse waits at the door with a piece of parting advice: “I know it’s hard. I know it’s messy. But if this person – this Scully – if she means as much to you as I think from the look of these pages, you should call her. She should be here.”

“Would you want to be?” Mulder asks, turning in the chair to face her. “If it were you, and it were somebody that you lov- if it were someone you knew who was dying, would you want to be here? Even if they couldn’t remember you?”

The nurse has a kind face, and Mulder regrets that he can’t remember her name. She pauses in the doorway and thinks about it, but only for a heartbeat.

“Yes,” the nurse says, earnestly, “-no matter how painful it is, or how hard – if it were my friend, I would want to be there for them. I wouldn’t want them to be alone.”

She leaves Mulder with an empty page and an empty heart. He wishes that he could capture Scully’s smile, or the colour of her hair, or the way the starlight shone in her eyes on long night drives and press them onto the page like flowers between the pages of a book. He wishes he had something more to hold on to. Slowly, picturing her in his mind’s eye, he put ink to paper, and began to fill the space with memories.

*

_Scully,_

_I’ve been thinking a lot about belief. I guess that happens when you’re dying._

_I used to believe in so much. I had to, I think – in order to sustain my own hope of finding my sister ~~S~~. ~~Da.~~ Samantha. Samantha Samantha  Samantha. Even her name is going now. Today I realised that I couldn’t remember the colour of her eyes. Yours are blue. I used to think they were like the sky, the place I searched, but they were better than that. Brighter. I found my answers in a different shade of blue. _

_You believe in God. You wore a gold cross around your neck; it used to catch in the light. Once, I held it for you while you were ~~ab~~ gone, and wanted so badly to be able to believe in your God for you. I used to. When I was a child, I used to know prayers by heart, but now only a few words of Hebrew remain. After my sister was taken, I set aside my Mother’s God and began to believe in something different. If that was a mistake, and I’m damned for my lack of faith, I hope one of your Gods is forgiving. Maybe I can have the strength of your beliefs._

**_The truth will set you free._ ** _I think that was in John. But it is not the right words: in the torah, it says ‘Know the truth’. That is all I have ever tried to do._

_I believed in life out of this planet, and creatures not known to man, and ghosts, and – what’s the word again? For bigfoot and mothman? You’ll know it. It’s in the x-files somewhere. I miss them, the files. The office. I took them for granted all those years. All that information. I wish I could have them here now, so that I don’t forget the things I used to believe in. I would like to read them again. Because if we have seen things that can’t be true, that cannot **be** , then maybe this is not the end. Maybe there is hope at the end of this road we have been walking. It was missing for such a long time, Scully. I had the belief, but not the hope – and what good is belief without it? Belief can set you free from the prison of the body, my own damned ~~biol~~ body failing me as it is now – but hope is what keeps you going along the way. _

_I still believe that we cannot be alone in this universe. It is too big, and too bright, and too strange for that. It’s too wonderful._

_Maybe you can believe for both of us now. In your God, and my universe. In hope._

  * __What is left of your friend Mulder.__



 

*

Scully didn’t believe in lost time.

She liked to believe that there was a scientific explanation for everything, including the mysteries of the universe, and even if they couldn’t understand it now, then one day science would catch up and be able to. Even the extra-terrestrial life and phenomenon Mulder devoted his life to could be explained, eventually. It was just a matter of time and progress.

In their own way, they had made progress in the science. Sitting in the basement writing reports, or in a morgue at 3am on a Tuesday morning, or breaking into yet another nameless facility searching for evidence – in doing the work, she had been able to substantiate things that would have been laughed at and dismissed, been able to cause just enough of a stir that she could see the ripples shaking the FBI. Other people were starting to listen now. They were starting to believe, just like she once had.

Scully still doesn’t believe in lost time without explanation, but she feels like she is losing it now.

Days pass, weeks fly, months vanish. There is still no sign of him. Her life begins to fall into a routine without any balance: she wakes, she goes into the office, she looks for Mulder, she tries not to look up hopefully at the sound of Doggett’s steps coming down the hallway, Skinner tells her to get some rest, she lies and says she does. Sometimes there are cases and she waits for Mulder to speak; can hear the words he’d say right then in her head, but there is only painful silence in the room. Throw in the occasional joy of morning sickness and her mother calling and Scully was just about ready to find an empty field and start screaming, cursing the skies and demanding that they bring him back.

“Agent Scully, how are you?”

She forces her lips into a thin smile and blinks out of her thoughts, finding Doggett standing in the doorway.

“I’m fine,” Scully lies smoothly. “Did you find something?”

Doggett’s expression creases at the question. Although his eyes are kind, there is also an unspoken pity in the way he looks at her most days, the same way everybody does – like they’re waiting for her to give up. She’ll prove them wrong. Doggett means well; but he isn’t Mulder. It’s okay, though, she’ll believe for both of them for a while. Scully knows Doggett’s answer before he even speaks -

“Nothing new. Lights over Phoenix again, but nothing linking Mulder to the case. Sorry, Scully.”

It’s the same news she hears every day. It should hurt less and less each time, but in reality, it just leaves her feeling _numb_. Scully bows her head, turning the movement into a nod before she stands, crossing the office quickly. His poster is still on the wall behind her; she cannot look back. Reaching her new partner, she places a hand on his shoulder for the briefest of seconds. _It’s not your fault_. Wordlessly, she leaves the office.

Scully goes home, because where else would she go? All the times before when she felt like this, like she was one bad day away from losing hope, she had found her feet taking her right to his front door. Now, Mulder’s apartment is vacant. She still has a key to it in her back pocket; Scully feeds the fish twice a week, but a thin layer of dust has started to colonise the rest of the apartment. It didn’t even _smell_ like him anymore. He is missing even there.

Her own apartment isn’t much better. She’s barely there anymore, with all the time spent at the office or on the road searching, and it’s beginning to look distressed from the lack of care she is showing it, or anything. There is half-empty coffee mugs and microwave meals are piling up in the sink, and her plants all died about a month after Mulder first vanished. She should really clean – but then again, she should do a lot of things that she doesn’t. Shower more often. Cook something that wasn’t done in three minutes. Sleep more than four hours a night.

Scully falls asleep on the couch watching an old movie, again, until a knock at the door breaks her monotonous life.

At the sound, she jerks awake and reaches for her gun in the same heartbeat. She hates that it’s her natural instinct now, to respond upon waking not to warm lips, but to the cold weight of her gun in her palm. Waking in a cold sweat had become her standard. Moving across the shadowed room, Scully presses the butt of her gun against the wooden door and before she glances through the peep-hole.

“Who are you?” Scully asks, raising her voice to be heard through the closed door.

The slight woman on the other side starts at the sound, head snapping up in search of her voice and focusing on the peep hole. She doesn’t look like the government type that Scully is used to – she isn’t alert enough for that, isn’t cautious enough – but there are shadows around her eyes, and the blue of hospital scrubs peeking out from underneath her long, dark coat. It is enough to make Scully relax marginally.

“Hello?” the woman asks, leaning towards the peep-hole. “I’m looking for a Scully? _Dana_ Scully?”

Her gut telling her that this woman is not a threat, Scully opens the door. Light spills carelessly into her apartment and the woman gives her a half-smile, a flush creeping up her cheeks, as she begins to explain-

“I’m sorry that it’s so late-”

“Do I know you?” Scully interrupts, left eyebrow hooking up. The woman doesn’t appear familiar to her – maybe it was someone she had known in medical school, or an old friend from high school.

“No,” the woman shakes her head, looking slightly embarrassed, “-and I probably shouldn’t be here. I drove here after work, and it took me a while to find the address I was given for you-”

Strangers knocking on her door in the middle of the night is usually bad news. Strangers who knew her name and address knocking on her door in the middle of the night was _dangerous_. Scully interrupted a second time with questions, this time moving her hand from behind the door to reveal the gun trained on the woman, whose eyes widen at the sight.

“I’m a federal agent. Who gave you my address? What business do you have here?”

“Please, I’m – I’m just a nurse, please don’t shoot me-”

“Why are you here?!”

“There’s a man! A man at the hospital where I work-” the woman fumbles for her words, eyes never leaving the gun in Scully’s hand as her back hits the wall behind her- “I got your address from him! He writes letters to you, and I came here because I thought it was sad that he was alone – I – it was a mistake. _Please_ , don’t shoot me.”

The genuine fear in the woman’s eyes haunts Scully. A moment later, the gun wavers as her hand falls slack to her side. Pounding heart slowing finally, Scully slumps against the doorframe, holding out a hand in peace as she puts her gun aside. She’s spent so long chasing monsters in the dark that she’s become one, holding a gun like it’s an extension of her arm.

When she speaks, it’s barely a whisper: “I’ve been in the basement for too long.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Scully shakes her head, glancing back up at the woman. “I’m sorry about the gun. My job, it’s dangerous. I have to be careful.”

Exhaustion makes her legs weak, and Scully retreats into her apartment. It takes a few seconds, but the woman hesitantly follows her inside, hovering close to the door, which she leaves open.

Scully looks up at her, “Please . . . if you will, explain. What man?”

*

_Scully,_

_They make me go to group therapy now. It’s part of the “Greenville Hospital Process”, apparently. It’s me and a bunch of 80 year olds sitting in a circle talking, and they don’t even get my jokes. Worst circle-jerk ever. I hate it. When I die, put on my grave that it’s better than having to listen to Old Man Joe talk about how the next generation are ignorant asses for the 57 th time. _

_But today they asked us about regret, and I realized that I have a few._

_Don’t get me wrong – even the bad times on the x-files were better than the good times anywhere else. Everything I achieved – everything we achieved there – I don’t regret a thing. But I do regret the pain it caused you. I regret all of the time I wasted holding you at arm’s length. I regret not kissing you sooner. _

_I remember the moment I knew you were it for me. But you probably don’t remember it at all – it wasn’t a special day, it was just like all of the others. You’d come over because I was upset about a case – funny, I don’t remember what it was now that had left me feeling so empty – but I know that I was alone, until you came over. And you brought take-out and rented a bunch of terrible old b-movies that you knew would make me laugh. But it was freezing in my apartment, the heating was broken again, so you borrowed one of my old college sweatshirts to wear even though it went down to your knees, and eventually we both fell asleep on my couch._

_It was a Sunday morning when I woke up and you were there, sleeping in a patch of sunlight, all curled up like a kitten, and I knew I loved you. I should have told you then. I should have told you a lot of times. I don’t regret a lot of things, but I regret that I never told you that. I regret not waking up that way for years now._

_And even later, when I wasn’t a coward and I kissed you and you smiled, and I woke up in your apartment and we tried to hide it from Skinner, I regret that we were never really together. Not properly. But then again, we’re not really a typical couple. We never went on an awkward first date because we already know each other. We never really went on a date at all – we were just together, just t here, and it was enough. At least it was for me._

_But I am sorry that I didn’t have more time to give to you. As a lover. As a partner. As a friend._

  * __Mulder.__



 

*

Scully knows that she should call Skinner and tell him what the woman at the door had told her, but she doesn’t. She knows that driving at midnight in the rain at ninety miles per hour while distressed is a bad idea, but she does it anyway. She knows that hope – that fragile, fleeting thing leaping in her chest – often ends in despair; but she hopes anyway.

Because if that the nurse at her door says is true – then Mulder is at the end of this road.

She pulls into the empty hospital parking lot at 6am and slams on her handbrake with a screech. It’s too early for visiting hours: dawn is just tinting the sky pink, and birds sing as she races towards the red-brick building. It’s not exactly a hospital – it looks like an old, grand house. It’s a nursing home masquerading as a hospital. She races towards the sunrise.

“Ma’am, visiting hours aren’t until-”

“I’m with the FBI-” Scully interrupts the bored-looking receptionist, words as fierce as her eyes, “-My name is Dana Scully. And you’re going to tell me what room Fox Mulder is in, _now_.”

Her tone and badge does the trick – Scully is led by an orderly through dim corridors until they come to a stop in front of room 414, on the first floor. There is a window in the door, and all of the air is crushed from Scully’s lungs as she pauses in front of it, seeing the figure sleeping inside. Mulder is lying on a hospital bed, mouth falling open, wearing the joke gift she’d gotten him for his last birthday – a grey t-shirt with a little green alien on the front, hand extended in the peace sign.

A high, broken laugh breaks her silence as her hand falls onto the window pane, and Scully can’t breathe, looking at him. Dawn’s light entering through the window by his bed turns everything grey. She vaguely hears footsteps receding, the orderly presumerably off to fetch a doctor or security, but the entire world is gone, except for the room on the other side of the window.

Scully enters the room quietly, letting the door close behind her and cut off the hallway light. All but falling into the blue plastic chair beside the bed, close to a desk, she stares and stares and tries not to blink for fear of him vanishing again between the closing of her eyes. Mulder looks peaceful in his sleep; he doesn’t stir as she covers his hand with her own, and she cries when he is _real_. There is warmth underneath her fingertips as she touches him, and he does not fade like a mirage. She has found him.

Although the light from the door is blocked by the arrival of a doctor, Scully flashes her badge and gestures blankly that she does not intend to disturb or wake the patient, so the cross-looking medic leaves. She barely takes her eyes off him for the hours that he sleeps. Dawn takes a hold of the world outside, turning the grey to a soft, bright yellow as the sun slowly rising, filling the room around them with light.

In the end, Mulder wakes when the sunlight hits his face, sleepily blinking towards the light until his eyes meet hers. Blinking sleepily, the hand under her own turns and squeezes gently, a soft smile appearing on Mulder’s face, although his eyes are clouded with confusion.

“Scully,” he murmurs, voice deep and thick with sleep, “What’re you doing out of bed? C’mere.”

He doesn’t seem to remember that he hasn’t seen her in months, trying to tug her into his side from the chair – and Scully finally cracks, feeling hot tears spill their bounds and leak down her cheeks, splashing onto the lino below her. She gasps, and leans until her head is buried in his chest, and weeps. Hands close around her, as Mulder strokes her hair and rubs her shoulders, voice making sounds of comfort, but she cannot pick out the words. She holds him for as long as it takes for her breathing to steady.

When she pulls away, chair legs scraping in a way that makes him wince as she moves closer to the hospital bed, Mulder’s eyes are still dazed. The smile is on his face still.

“What happened?” he asks, looking around the room, “Did I get hurt again? I sure hope it wasn’t another mushroom.”

“Mulder, how can you-” she doesn’t understand how he can just lie there with a smile on his face, like there’s nothing wrong. “It’s been _months_. You were . . . you’ve been missing.”

Finally, something clicks. Mulder’s brow creases together, knitting itself wrinkles with worry and thought, as he looks steadily around the room, across his clothes piled on the chair and papers on the desk – suddenly, his eyes clear. He remembers something, she sees the change come over him, and then he turns to her in a panic.

“Scully. You can’t – you’re not supposed to be here-”

“What do you mean ‘I’m not supposed to be here’? How can you even say that after I’ve been looking for you for months - you we’re abducted! You were _taken_. Skinner saw it. Mulder . . . what the hell is going on?”

And she’s crying and his eyes are shining – which is strange enough, because Mulder rarely cries in hospital, he’s all jokes and smiles and ‘when can I get back to the office’ – but there’s a panic in them now, a deep-rooted fear, and his hand in her own clenches tightly. She can feel his nails digging into her skin. Mulder’s mouth falls open and closes, like he’s trying to talk, but the words can’t find their way out. Eventually, a tear falls down his face.

He crumbles. And she has seen Mulder cry before, too many times, but never like this. His face cracks, the pressure of some enormous weight too much for him to carry anymore, and he bows his head and weeps. Scully stares blankly in shock. Slowly, her hand reaches to cradle his head, and she moves from the plastic chair to perch on the bed, holding him. They had sat like this a thousand times at a thousand bedsides. It’s a painfully familiar scene.

“Mulder . . .” she says quietly, after a little while. “Whatever it is, we can face it together. Please, _please_ -”

She doesn’t even know what she’s asking for anymore, from the sleepless night and the emotional weight of seeing him again. Her throat is dry; her voice scratchy and desperate. Scully’s ears are ringing, and it’s all too much, so much so that she almost misses his words when he does speak.

“I’m dying, Scully.”

Mulder looks up at her, lifting his head from her shoulder. His eyes are inches away from her own, and she knows them so well that she can tell a lie from their hue. But now they are clear. They’re shining with truth. A gasp forces its way free from her as she realises the implication of that; if he is telling the truth . . .

“No-”

It comes from her as a whimper, as a whisper. A disbelieving noise. Scully’s lips move of their own accord, desperately trying to deny it.

“No, you _can’t_ be – it can’t be true-”

“Shhhhh,” Mulder nods sadly, eyes brimming. Now, it’s his hands on her face, steadying her, with a long look of resignation on his own. He doesn’t say anything, just pushes her hair from her eyes, one thumb trailing down her face, resting on her lip. He looks at her and stops her head from shaking, even as the world falls from beneath her feet. As she sobs, he explains in a quiet, patient tone. “I have degenerative brain disease. It’s like dementia, but not quite . . . it has the same effect, though. Memory loss. Body and functional degeneration. _Dying_. It started after my coma, after the alien writing . . . I came here for a year hoping for answers. But there’s nothing that can save me, Scully. I faked my own abduction and came here because they can care for me here, without me being a burden.”

Through her tears, Scully manages to be angry. She’s good at that. Letting it consume her, burning away the overwhelming terror and despair at his words, she blinks up at him.

“A burden . . . Mulder, you’ve been my partner for seven years. I lo-” she’s so mad, her voice cracks, but sets again in determination, “What made you think that anything you could say or do could change that?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you-”

“ _Hurt_ me? Mulder, I’ve been out of my mind searching for you! And whatever this is – we could have fought it, _together_. Like we do everything else.” She’s so close that she can feel his breath on his face; his heartbeat under her hand where it rests on his chest, and she wants to shake him to make him see sense. “I decided a long time ago that I’m with you, Mulder. Bad times or good, believing or searching, _I’m on your side_. I’m _by_ your side . . . You should have told me.”

The last words come out through as sob, and she’s half-pushing him away, but Mulder holds on. Tilting her chin up to meet his eyes, he presses a kiss firmly onto her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she believes him. “I didn’t want you to-”

Now it’s his turn to falter, to break off with an angry huff. He leans away, so Scully stands silently beside the bed, giving him space to breathe, but pushing gently -

“. . . Mulder?”

“I didn’t want you to have to watch me die, Scully! I’m going to be – I’m going to be _broken_ , before long. I’m already loosing things. Memories. I can’t even walk half of the time anymore, and I – I didn’t want you to see me like this!” he’s half shouting, desperate, and is begging her silently when he looks back at her, “Scully, please. Go. This isn’t how I want you to remember me.”

“No! I’m not going anywhere, and you’re _not_ dying!” she argues. “I’m a doctor. I’m _your_ doctor. This was done to you, the writing did it; and if it can be done, then it can be reversed-”

“No, no, no. Scully, don’t-”

“Don’t _what_? Try and save you? If it were me lying in that hospital bed you’d go out of your mind trying to find a cure! You _did_!”

“Don’t give yourself false hope!” he bursts out, shouting. Mulder’s chest is heaving and there’s a light sweat on his forehead as he stares at her from the bed. She stares back, as his eyes glisten. He says, firmly, “Scully, I’m dying. I’ve accepted that. I’ve prepared for it. You need to do the same.”

“You ran away, Mulder-” she says, and Scully knows that arguing is the last thing she wants to do with him after being reunited, but the swell of rage at the universe for _daring_ to think that it can take her from him is overwhelming. “After all we’ve been through, you should know better than to think I wouldn’t find you, or that I wouldn’t try to save you once I did. You’re not leaving me-” she swears, voice reverberating through the room with power, “Not again. I won’t let you go. I’ll be back to see you soon, and I _will_ find a cure.”

“Scully-” he says her name, a prayer, “please-”

But she’s already gone, heels clicking against the hospital floor and a storm full of thoughts, even as her tears dry on her face. Her whole world had just been upturned, but Scully was resolute in her beliefs. She would save him.

It’s what they did.

*

_Scully,_

_You found me today. I planned for everything when I chose to disappear, except for that._

_You were angry. At me, at my illness, at the whole universe. I want you to know that it’s okay. Be as angry as you need to be. If you need to hate me, or try and find a cure, or scream – you do it. And if a day after I am gone ever comes where you regret being angry: know that it’s okay, and that I understood. I’m angry, too. I’m angry that I don’t get more time with you, and at my own body, and my disintegrating mind. And if you need forgiveness – I forgive you. But never feel sorry for being angry. You feel everything so much – you always have – and I know how hard this must be. _

_Although it is not what I wanted, a part of me is glad that you once again proved me wrong. I got to see you again._

_Your friend, always, no matter how angry you are,_

_Mulder._

*

It’s been twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes since Scully left Mulder’s hospital room, and in that time she’s stolen his medical records, ruled out four possible causes for his condition, and began running blood work analysis at the FBI labs. She hasn’t slept yet, but she also hasn’t started crying again, so she counts that as a win. It’s been a long sort of day.

The lights in the lab are dimmed as she waits for test results, reading his files and trying to ignore the headache building behind her eyes. The harsh lighting had been agony before she turned them down. Scully ignores her buzzing phone, and the itching of her eyes, and continues reading over blurring words, determined to make sense of them. They say that Mulder is dying, that his brain is slowly declining as different areas fail and break down, and that there is nothing that can stop it.

She doesn’t believe that. She _can’t_ believe that. Not today, or any day.

“Scully . . .”

The voice is cautious as it approaches her, and she cannot place it in her fatigued state until Skinner steps into the circle of muted light around her. From the look on his face, she knows that he knows, so looks back down to the file and says, “-we can save him.”

“I just got off the phone with Mulder,” Skinner says, carefully. Like he’s walking on eggshells around her. “He told me what he’d done, and why. I’m mad at him too, for lying to us about it, but from what he says . . . he’s dying, Scully.”

“He’s not-” she turns, voice so heated that Skinner takes a step back. Her eyes burn, and Scully repeats. Her voice is so quiet, it’s barely audible. She _has_ to believe. “Mulder’s _not_ dying.”

It’s finally too much.

The dam breaks; she all but falls to the floor as huge sobs break her quiet, thoroughly destroying the silence that had settled deep into her bones the moment she walked out of Mulder’s hospital room. The world comes crashing back. Although Scully’s hand clamps over her mouth, trying to hold it back, she can no longer keep her composure and weeps openly. If Skinner hadn’t half-caught her, she would have fallen and crumbled entirely. As it was, she felt him shake as he tried not to fall apart as he held her together, letting her weep onto his shoulder. They stay that way for a long time.

By the time she can breathe again, Scully’s head is in the crook of Skinner’s shoulder, and she wonders when he became family.

Skinner says, softly, “You need to speak to him again. See him.”

“I will,” she nods. “But I won’t give up just because he has. You know he’d do the same for me.”

Not for the first time, her boss sounds tired when he speaks. “You both have done this too many times.”

“He’s not dying,” she says for a final time. It’s louder, now.

Scully pushes him away and leaves the lab. She knows what she needs to do. Already, she can see from the files that every medical treatment has been exhausted, and that there is no cure for Mulder in the science she holds so precious – so she must make a deal with the devil.

It takes her half an hour to drive to the nearest department of defence building. There are men in soldier’s uniforms at the door that she brushes past, stalking into the lobby with purpose and slamming her fist on the receptionist’s desk.

“I need to talk to Spender.”

The man behind the desk is dressed in military uniform, young and fit, and feigning ignorance. “Who? Do you have an appointment with someone, miss?”

“ _Agent_ -” she bites out, “Agent Scully with the FBI. I’m going to speak to C.G.B Spender – or whatever alias he’s going by now – whether you like it or not. Get him. _Now_.”

“I’m afraid there’s nobody by that name employed here at this time-”

Scully steps away from the desk. Well, she tried being civil.

“Spender!” she shouts, causing a scene immediately – men clad in business suits and soldiers stare as she begins to scream at thin air, directing her words to the security camera she spots behind the desk – but she doesn’t care. “I know you can hear me, you cigarette-smoking son of a bitch! I’m not going anywhere – you know why. You _know_ I won’t stop. Get out here!”

And simple as that, Scully stands there, staring down the camera and daring it to blink first.

A door opens to her right, and the smoking man steps out. There’s a characteristic trail of the stuff drifting from the lit cigarette dangling between his lips, but for the first time in a while, Scully doesn’t even feel a twinge of fear upon seeing him. Smoking man might just be the most dangerous person in any room, on any other day – with a few notable exceptions. Because as dangerous and as powerful as Smoking Man thought he was: Mulder was dying, and as long as that was true, then she was the most dangerous person in the room, because there was nothing on God’s green earth that was going to stop her from saving him.

“You know-” she says, loudly, hands in fists at her sides. “You know about Mulder.”

There’s a pause. “I do. Perhaps we should discuss this in my office, Agent Scully.”

“No,” Scully shakes her head, because who gives a damn who hears? Certainly not her. Not today. “No, you tell me now – and don’t even think about lying, or I will make it my personal mission to burn you and all your plans to the ground – can you? Can you save him?”

The Smoking Man doesn’t break eye contact, just stares back at her – and if she didn’t already know that he didn’t have a heart, she’d swear that there was a glint of sadness in his gaze. But it could only have been the haze of smoke. Slowly, he removes the cigarette from his lips to answer.

“My dearest Scully, you know how important Mulder has been to me. But I cannot.”

“No-” she hisses, taking a step towards him, “No – you can. You have to! Or what is – what is the _point_ of you?”

“If I could do anything . . .”

“You’d do it for a price,” Scully spits. She wants to believe that he is lying, as he often is, and that he has some secret way to save Mulder’s life. But there’s a look in his eyes that is all too strikingly similar to the defeat in her own. Although tears threaten to fall again, she turns it into gritted teeth, and the most spiteful look she can muster as she steps towards the Smoking Man. “No matter what happens – you lose. I won’t ever stop. I promise you . . . you lose.”

Turning, Scully left the building with the smell of smoke hanging on her clothes. She manages not to break down until it’s firmly in the rear-view, the sun already setting over the D.C skyline, as her hope sinks in her chest.

*

_Scully,_

_The man we work with came today. The bald one. I couldn’t remember his name so I called him ‘sir’, but I think he noticed anyway. Apologise to him for me, please. I might not have remembered his name, but I knew that I could trust him. I knew that. I think he’s important._

_He also told me that he forgives me for faking my abduction. I needed that, too. I guess I didn’t realize how much it could hurt you all. That wasn’t what I intended. I just thought – I would leave quietly, and that would be it. No fuss. No pain. I thought that it would hurt less for me to just go than to slowly die in front of you all._

_And I suppose, I wanted to die with dignity. With pride. And the man having to push me in a wheelchair to the bathroom today was . . . well, perhaps not the most embarrassing moment of my life. Top ten. You know number one. It involves me being drugged by a vampire – of all the memories I’m losing, why is that one still clear? I really must have pissed off the universe for this karma._

_I do think that some of my missing memories are a blessing. A kindness, perhaps, in these last few months, to let me forget the worst of days._

_Did I used to smoke? One of the ~~o~~ nurses does, and smells of ash when they come in and every time, it just makes me feel – it makes me feel sick. I can’t remember why. Maybe that’s another good thing. Maybe I forgot that one for a reason._

_Things are going faster now. I can’t wear trousers or dress shirts anymore - sweatpants only for me. And I’m not allowed to leave my room by myself anymore. I’m forgetting words, too. But they let me keep writing, and the bald man brought a poster for my wall. I like it. It has a spacecraft on it. It’s the last thing I see every night before I sleep, and the first thing I see when I wake. It makes me smile._

_I wish it was you._

_I hope you come back soon._

_\- Spooky._

*

By the time Scully makes it back to the hospital, over a day has week since she last saw Mulder. She still hasn’t slept more than twelve hours, or found a cure, and the highway lights are blurry as she speeds out of the city towards him. Time stopped mattering a while ago. The only thing that really mattered anymore was a cure – and she can’t find one.

She isn’t giving up, not yet, but she cannot go on without talking to him again. So she drives.

When she gets to the hospital it is 8:30pm and visiting hours are over, but they never really were good at listening to those. All the times they’ve been in hospital . . . Mulder had sat at her bedside all night and slept in hospital corridors, and she had done the same, refusing to move from each other’s side. Between them, she and Mulder had managed to piss off hundreds of hospital porters and nurses. It almost makes her smile as she ignores the receptionist’s shouts and walks straight to his room.

Mulder is awake when she arrives, sitting at the desk by the window with a flurry of pages around him. He turns when the door opens, and still smiles when he sees her there, despite the way she had left him a week ago. There is scattered writing on the pages, and Scully nods to it as she enters, searching for a way to break the ice.

“What are you writing?”

“Ah,” he shrugs, but carefully covers the sheet he is writing on with a blank piece of paper to hide it, “Nothing important.”

Mulder looks up at her expectantly, but there is no anger in his eyes. Only patience.

Scully caves; running a hand through her hair, diving in head first. “Can we talk? We need to – _I_ need to talk.”

“Of course we can-” he replies. There’s an edge to Mulder’s voice as he ducks his head, trying to turn to her but struggling to stand and move the chair. And she knows – she _knows_ how hard this must be for him – she knows how stubborn he is, and how proud, no matter how much he claimed not to give a damn what anyone thought. Mulder tugs at his shirt-sleeves and looks uncomfortable, not quite meeting her eyes as he gestures for her to go ahead, and talk.

And she can’t save him – not yet – but she can make this easier.

So Scully shakes her head in disbelief at herself before suggesting: “Hey, Mulder-”

“Hmmn?”

“Do you want to break hospital policy and take this one outside?”

The smile that breaks across his face lights up the room. It’s so _bright_ , a teeth-showing boyish grin, just an edge of tongue poking out as he replies, “Why, Doctor Scully! Breaking hospital rules? I _have_ had a bad influence on you.”

“Shut up, Mulder-” she laughs. Helping him into the wheelchair parked just inside the door, Scully glances both ways into the corridor before hurrying him out, pushing the chair before her towards the nearest emergency exit, marked in glowing green light. Although she can tell by his wince when she first pushes the chair towards him that it’s injuring him a little bit, having to be wheeled around, by the time they’re moving there’s stifled laughter escaping him – Mulder grins up at her as she sneaks them out of the emergency exit like they’re two kids doing something they shouldn’t be, and Scully can’t help but smile back.

She pushes him outside of the hospital, into the outdoor area at the back of the building. There’s a stone terrace overlooking a small garden run by residents, which drops steeply then to empty fields, reminding her that the hospital he had chosen was as far away from the city and government as Mulder could get. There’s nothing but green grass and empty sky in front of them as Scully parks his wheelchair on the edge of the terrace, grabbing a white plastic chair from nearby and sitting beside him in the cool night air.

Mulder sits gazing, eyes full of stars.

“Stop staring, Scully-” he says after a while, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes. But his lip quirks up at the same time, teasing: he adds with a sarcastic tap at his wheelchair, “Unless all this medical stuff is turning you on. I gotta admit – you breaking the rules back there did it for me a little bit-”

Scully snorts a laugh and kicks his chair in response, and the two of them sit a minute longer, giggling into the darkness. Eventually, when it becomes clear that she can’t stop looking at him, but she can’t find the words either, Mulder speaks again.

“Whatever it is . . . you should say it, Scully. While you can.”

“Don’t-” Scully closes her eyes like she’s in pain, shaking her head, “- don’t talk like that, Mulder.”

“What? Like I’m dying? Because I am,” he says, refusing to let it slide. Mulder looks at her until Scully returns her gaze to him, leaning as much as he can in the chair and saying slowly, “I know you’re going to try and find a cure, Scully. But just in case. Just _because_ – you should accept it, too. You should say the things you need to say while I still remember why you’re saying them. Or at least – if you can’t say it to me, tell it to the stars.”

He leaves her with that, returning to star-gazing. It relieves the pressure between them, and Mulder sits, waiting, and eventually, Scully stops biting her lip and begins to talk.

“I’m angry, Mulder. I’m _so_ angry I could . . .” she ducks her hand and twists her hands together in her lap as a distraction, “I’m mad at you for not telling me as soon as you found out you were sick. I’m mad that you – you felt that you had to fake your _abduction_ instead of telling me. And I’m sorry that you felt you couldn’t come to me.”

“That wasn’t why-” he cuts in quickly, and there’s not a moment of hesitation or doubt. “You know that’s not why. I didn’t tell you, and maybe that was wrong, but it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you. You’re the _only_ one I trust. I just couldn’t do that to you; put this burden on your shoulders.”

“You’re not a burden. Not now, not ever-”

“I _will_ be! I am. I can’t even walk. I can’t look after myself anymore. Sooner or later . . . I was always going to be a burden.”

“Not to me.”

Now, it’s her turn to sound sure. Scully looks over to him, fire in her eyes, and shakes her head. And she can see the uncertainty in him now, the hesitation – the way his eyes flick down to the wheelchair before returning back to the stars, and the almost imperceptible shake of his hand. _Almost_ being the operative word.

“You know I’m going to keep looking for a cure, right?” she asks, head tilted to one side.

“I know you are,” Mulder nods in reply, jaw setting into an unhappy line. “I won’t ask you not to. But don’t – don’t blame yourself if you can’t find one, not even for a second. Don’t waste your life thinking about something you couldn’t change.”

“We don’t know that yet-” Scully argues, and Mulder makes a noise but doesn’t reply. Obviously, to him it was decided: he was dead already. She adds, sure to make it clear, “And I’m going to keep visiting you, too. I know it’s not what you wanted, but if you think for a second that I’m going to let you be alone, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did. I’m going to be here. Just like you were for me, when I had cancer . . .”

Although he looks unhappy about it, humming under his breath and looking away, hand cupping his chin, Mulder doesn’t argue. But he’s not as careful at hiding his emotions anymore, and his grumpiness is clear as she tries to get his attention again.

“Mulder, when I think that I could lose you . . .”

Tears spill down her face, and Scully swipes them away, still not able to face him. She takes his advice and begins talking outwards, to the vast sky above them, dotted with a thousand lights.

“I thought a lot about death, when I had my cancer. About dying. But it’s different when it’s your own death, your own mortality . . . we’ve both lost too many people, Mulder. Your sister. My sister. My father, your father, your mother – our lives, they’re not – they’re a list of the dead we never really got to bury because we never got answers. We never got _justice_ , for them or for ourselves. And I – I was ready to die, by the end. I was content with it. I thought that if my life ended at that time, then I could say that I did something worthwhile, and found the truth – and I trusted you to finish the journey and bring it to light. But _you_ -”

Finally, she turns to him. Mulder is staring right back at her, and takes her hand as she reaches for him, squeezing it tightly.

“I can’t do this without you, Mulder. I don’t _want_ to do this without you.”

“I know,” he says softly, his irritation from earlier dissolved; now, he just looks sad, “-but I trust you, too. To finish this, if I can’t, for _both_ of us. I couldn’t think of better hands to leave the x-files in.”

And Scully laughs through her tears, “I bet you never thought you’d say that, back at the start. I bet this was never- never how you thought this would end.”

The smile fades, and she’s crying, pulling their joined hands closer so she can press his knuckles to her lips. Scully kisses his hand and Mulder tugs her towards him, until she’s sitting on the handlebar of his wheelchair with his arms around her waist and his head resting on his chest, and she can feel him shaking beneath her; she thinks it might just kill them both to let go.

“I don’t want to go, Scully-” he says, and his voice cracks, “I don’t want to leave you. Hell, I’m scared. I don’t know what will happen next. But I _believe_ – I still want to believe . . .”

He can’t finish the words, so she looks up to the stars and finishes for him.

“Do you remember what you told me years ago? That maybe starlight is just souls, travelling in a place we haven’t got to yet?”

Scully feels him nod, and lift his head to look up again. Mulder’s eyes are full of starlight, and she presses a kiss onto his forehead, onto his eyelids, onto his cheeks and nose and lips –

She turns her gaze heavenwards, and they sit that way for the longest of times, watching the stars and the moon pass through its phases, until a nurse finds them and they both get shouted at for flouting hospital policy – but Mulder grins again as he is wheeled away to his room and she is kicked out of the hospital for the night, and still – Scully smiles back.

*

_Scully,_

_I get visitors more often now. You come, at least three times a week. I mark them down on the calendar so I know if you’ve been, so I don’t forget and miss you. Skinner comes too. I remember him sometimes. Sometimes you come together. Other people come too. The three - the gunmen. They come sometimes, and they don’t seem to mind when I get them mixed up. I’ve started keeping pictures of everyone important by my bed, with their names underneath, so I know who to trust. It’s important that I don’t talk to the wrong people, you see. They still might want me for information. I need to be careful, but don’t worry, Scully, I won’t tell anyone anything unless I’ve checked with you first._

_The last time you came, you brought sunflower seeds, which I like. The hospital doesn’t let me have them anymore. You snuck them in, but took the packet with you when you left. Why do I eat them so much again? I’m sure there’s a reason. Maybe you can bring some more again._

_Skinner also brought me something – a video to watch on the tv in the rec room. It was about Bigfoot. Did we ever find him? I remember being in a forest with you. I was tired, and you sang to me. But I can’t remember the song. Did we find Bigfoot there? Did we prove it?_

_I like it when people come. It’s less boring when they do, and they can tell me about the things I forget. But I’m still waiting for my mother to come. I’d have thought she’d have been here by now._

_But I’m glad you’re here, at least._

_\- Mulder._

*

Scully goes to the hospital as often as she can, now. She still works the x-files with Doggett in the week and searches for a cure on her evenings, but at least three nights a week, she makes the drive over to the hospital to see him, and makes a point of spending all day on Sunday there. It still doesn’t feel like enough. She’d quit the x-files to stay there full-time with him, if she didn’t know that would be the last thing Mulder would want.

But she visits when she can, and hopes. She puts on a smile.

Mulder has good days, and bad days. As the months pass, the bad days start to happen more often, and his moods swing at the drop of a hat – he tells her that he can’t trust the nurses, and that they’re trying to experiment on him. She reminds him that he was the one who checked himself in there. He tells her that aliens steal his memory if he goes outside. She takes him for walks in the garden with his wheelchair, and reasons that if he doesn’t go outside, he cannot see the stars. Mulder gets cluster headaches that leave him lying in the dark for days, unable to move, and she sits in the darkness with him and strokes his hair until he sleeps. Most of the time, she is able to talk him around his fears and his moods until he’s almost like her Mulder again.

But the bad days still happen. Like today.

“Mulder,” she says as she walks into the room with a smile, seeing him at the desk again, diligently writing whatever he was working on – “Don’t tell Skinner, but I brought you some old files from the office to look over. Arthur Dale’s x-files. Your favourites.”

The smile slips from her face as Mulder looks stricken at her standing there.

“Scully, what are you doing out of bed?”

“What?”

“You should be resting, you shouldn’t be out of bed like this-” immediately trying to get to his feet, he stumbles, legs weak now, and she catches him. Holding him up, Scully looks up to find Mulder looking devastated, already trying to move again, to direct her to the bed. “You need to get in bed, Scully.”

“Okay. Okay, I will, but only if you come with me.”

Scully doesn’t know what’s happening, but agreeing with him seems like the best way to get him to stop trying to walk before he hurts himself, so she nods and sets them both down on the hospital bed. As soon as he sits, Mulder puts his head in his hands and groans, until she touches the nape of his neck gently- Mulder’s head snaps up to her, and again he starts to ramble and look worried.

“You’re sick . . . you’re sick, you need to rest-”

“Hey, Mulder – I’m fine. Look at me, I’m fine.”

Scully tilts his chin up to face her, keeping her hand on his face; she lets Mulder touch her shoulders, eyes sweeping over her in hungry relief, before they cloud in confusion. “Scully, I don’t understand . . . your cancer. You should be in bed. Why aren’t you . . .”

It clicks in her mind. Pushing aside the wave of nausea, like a blow to the stomach, Scully strokes his hair and shakes her head, leaning in close so that she was all Mulder could see. His forehead is sweaty against her own, clammy, and she wonders if he’s running a fever.

“Mulder, I want you to listen to me. I’m _not_ sick. I don’t have cancer anymore – you found a cure for me, remember?”

“I . . . I saved you?”

“Yeah,” she nods, both of their heads bobbing with the movement, “You saved me, Mulder. Just like you always do.”

“And you’re not . . .” Mulder swallows, voice thick, “You’re not gonna . . .”

Scully tries not to cry. “No, Mulder. I’m not dying. I’m staying right here with you.”

“Okay,” he says, voice weaker now. Mulder’s eyes are scrunched shut, and she worries that one of his bad headaches is looming on the horizon. “Good.”

“Can you look at me?” Scully asks. Mulder dutifully obeys, and she notices that his pupils are slow to dilate to the light. “Do you have a headache, Mulder?” He shakes his head no, but looks away as he does. Scully catches his chin and asks, “Are you lying to me? You promised never to do that again.”

“I . . . I don’t want the tablets, Scully. They make me tired.”

“That’s good. You need to rest; and when you wake, you’ll feel better. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

“But what if . . . what if I wake up, and you’re gone?”

“It’s Sunday,” she smiles, “The hospital let me sleep here on Sundays, do you remember that? I’ll be right here.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he replies quietly. Mulder is looking at her like he’s trying to commit every inch of her face to memory; every freckle, every wrinkle, every scar. He’s so desperate in his looking that it breaks her heart when she realises what he _does_ mean.

“Oh-” Scully breathes. “I can’t promise that. But I can promise that even if – even if you do forget me, I’ll keep coming to see you. And you - you can remember me again.”

She convinces Mulder to lie down in the hospital bed, and helps him to swallow some painkillers with water. Scully closes the blinds and sits on the chair beside the bed, holding one of his hands with hers while the other pushes at the curls on his head, slowly rubbing her fingers in circles that seem to relax him.

“Scully?” he asks quietly after a while, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Can you sing for me? I remember . . . I remember before, you sang me to sleep. You have a nice voice. Please, can you . . .”

Scully wipes a hand over her eyes and clears her throat to hide the fact she’s crying, and begins to hum the song, singing along out of key.

“Jeremiah was a bull frog. He was a good friend of mine. I – I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine. And he always had some mighty fine wine . . . joy to the world. To all the boys and g-girls. Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me . . .”

Just as she thinks he’s asleep, Mulder speaks quietly. “I think there’s one good thing about forgetting you, Scully. I get to . . . I get to meet you all over again. To . . . to fall in love again.”

His breathing evens out, and Mulder sleeps. When he wakes again, Scully is still sitting in the chair beside him, holding his hand, and the first thing he does upon waking is smile at the sight, and speak a single word. Just one thing. A name.

*

_Scully,_

_It’s getting harder to write now. I find myself desperately trying to write while I still can, but I can feel it coming now – the shake in my hand, the gaps in my mind where words should be. I can feel the time coming where even this, one of the few things that still lets me feel something and feel useful, even this is gone. I write more for fear of when I can’t._

_It’s okay. I promise you, its okay. I’ve gotten most things down now. The important things. All except one._

_I love you._

_If I said it, it wasn’t often enough. I love you. _

_And I know we started off on rocky footing, and we spent too long waiting for the right time, and a part of that was probably my fault. But the time we did get, I wouldn’t trade for anything. Not for the world. Not for more time. Those memories are mine, and they’re some of the clearest ones I have left. Everything else . . .everything else is fading now, like it happened to somebody else and not me, like they’re something that I saw on the TV - but there are memories with you that are still so close its almost as if I can touch them. God, I hope they’re real. Even if they’re not, and they’re some delusion of my addled brain to bring me comfort in my dying days, my memories of you are as close to heaven as I’m likely to get._

_Let me say now, just for the hell of it, just so you know – you, you are the love of my life. My miracle. My Scully._

_I hope you know before you read this how I felt. You should do. I’ve loved you for so long, you have to know by now._

_M._

*

Scully’s heart stops when her phone rings and she sees the hospital’s number displayed. She lives in fear of The Call. Everytime her phone rings unexpectedly, her stomach drops, and the world goes blurry until she hears confirmation that Mulder is okay on the other end of the line. She knows one day that it won’t be just another false alarm – its coming. The Call is coming soon.

“Is he-”

“Mulder is alive,” a voice says quickly, before Scully can work herself into more of a state. She places the voice as Mulder’s primary nurse, listening as the nurse explains. “He’s upset today – more than usual. He couldn’t write earlier. Couldn’t hold the pen, couldn’t write – it’s been getting more difficult for him this past month– but today he couldn’t write at all. He got angry and threw the paper around the room, then cried because he thought it was ruined. I helped him to gather it all up and put it in order again, but . . . he keeps asking for you.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Scully hangs up before the nurse has a chance to reply, dressing and dashing from the house as quickly as she can. Which is getting increasingly slow, as she’s now seven months pregnant. Sometimes, he forgets between her visits and it’s almost worth it to see the smile that grows on his face when Mulder realizes that he’s going to be a father.

On the way to the hospital, Scully makes a stop at the office.

It takes her hours to drive, but the nurse is waiting for her when Scully gets there. “Thank you for coming, Agent Scully.”

“I’ll always come if he needs me.”

The nurse pauses in front of Mulder’s room and puts a hand on Scully’s shoulder. “What he’s writing - it’s important to him. Just – be prepared for him to be angry, today.”

“Do you know what it is? What he’s writing?”

“I do,” the nurse replies, biting her lip. “But he made me promise not to tell you just yet.”

“Thank you,” Scully replies, and means it. “For looking after him, and everything. And for finding me, even if I did pull a gun on you.”

The nurse laughs tightly, nodding. “I don’t like seeing any patient alone. And . . . he’s been better these past months, since you’ve been visiting him. He forgets everyone else now – but he always asks for you. I think you help him.”

She leaves Scully alone, facing the door. She can see Mulder inside, leafing through his papers in a panic, eyes wide and muttering to himself, and takes a deep breath before she enters the room.

“Mulder-”

He looks straight up at her voice, and it still brings her relief every time he replies with clear eyes. “ _Scully_.”

“Hey there,” she grins softly, crossing over to him. Pressing a kiss to Mulder’s hairline as he loops an arm around her waist, Scully tries to catch a glimpse of the papers – she sees writing covering page after page, but it looks like it’s been written by different people. She recognises Mulder’s neat loops on one sheet, but the next looks as if it has been written by a child. He catches her looking, and pulls it away.

“Don’t-” he says quickly, a storm on his face in seconds, “-not yet.”

Scully takes a step away from him. “Mulder, you can show me-”

“I said don’t look!” Mulder snaps, pushing the papers away from her so violently that they get messed up again, one creasing badly. His shoulders are tense, high, and she can hear the thinly-veiled frustration in his voice right away. “Stop it, Scully. Why are you here?”

The words come out rough and he won’t look at her anymore. Scully tells herself that he isn’t to blame, that it’s just a bad day – swallowing her hurt, she tries again.

“I came here to see you. The nurse called me; she said you were having a bad day.”

“Oh, so you’re talking about me behind my back now?”

“No, Mulder-”

“I know I’m not much use anymore – I can’t even – I can’t even _write_ , I’m _useless_ , so I bet you both had a great laugh at that.”

“Nobody is laughing, Mulder,” Scully says, quieter this time. He is ranting, and it happens occasionally, but he doesn’t stop once he has started. There’s a bite in his tone and his shoulders are shaking; he is angry, but she doesn’t think he’s angry at her, not really. He needs her. So Scully walks over, placing a hand on his shoulder – Mulder tenses, but does not pull away. “I just came to see you, that’s all. I thought that if you were – and I’m not saying that you are – if you were having a bad day, I might be able to help.”

He’s silent for a minute or two, breathing heavily as he slowly re-organises the papers thrown across his desk. Mulder breathes through his anger, muttering numbers under his breath like she had taught him to control his episodes of bad moods, and does not speak until he has sorted it all out. After he is done, Mulder seems calmer.

“I’m sorry, Scully. I didn’t – I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’m jus’ tired. And I can’t-” he lifts a page, and there are tears in his voice. “I can’t even do this anymore.”

“Alright,” Scully holds her hands up. It hurts to see him preparing for an after when to her, the after is unthinkable, but she doesn’t want to waste any time arguing. Making a show of her movement, she crosses her heart. “I promise that I won’t look at what you’re writing until you tell me that I can. But I _do_ have something to help.”

Mulder huffs and crosses his arms over the papers, “You can’t help . . . I can’t read anymore, can’t write. S’too hard.”

“Ah, but Mulder – I’m the best doctor in the world. And an amazing magician. Watch.”

It feels like she’s walking in his shoes, some days. Usually it’s Mulder playing the part of joker to make her laugh, forcing a smile to bring some light back into a room, but now she’s the one with the magic and the moves and the bad jokes. As long as he smiles, it’s worth it.

Scully steps back, pulling up her sleeves to show him that her hands are empty – he stares back at her, unimpressed, one eyebrow hooked as if to ask _you? really?_ But she only smiles enigmatically and waves her hand dramatically – producing his old pair of glasses out of thin air.

“Very impressive,” Mulder deadpans, but his eyes have some of their old sparkle. “You practise that for me? I didn’t know you cared, Scully.”

“These-” Scully says, walking back over to him, “-are magic glasses. If you wear them and try, you’ll be able to write again.”

“That’s funny, they look a lot like my old college specs-”

“Skeptic,” she teases.

“Me?” he grins, “Never.”

He laughs, and it’s almost like old days, smiling at each other across the office with no cares in the world except for whatever monster they were chasing that week. Their roles may have been reversed, but it’s almost like no time at all has passed as Mulder lets her stand over him and perch the glasses on his nose.

Blinking heavily to re-focus his eyes, Mulder looks up at her. “What do you think, doc? Still a handsome son-of-a-gun?”

Scully almost chokes on her breath. In those glasses, he looks so much like the first time she saw him, across an office stacked with papers, hair a mess and daring her to dismiss him. The same old Mulder. But now there are flecks of grey at his temples, and laughter lines by his eyes, and she knows him down to the smell of his skin first thing in the morning.

“Dashing as ever,” she smiles, but it comes out crooked. Mulder notices, catching her hand and rubbing his thumb over her palm.

“That bad, huh?”

Scully shakes her head, and touches his face gently, palms on his cheeks. If she could just keep looking at him; if they could stay exactly as they are – she thinks she could spend eternity in this moment. Just so long as he stayed there.

“You always look the same to me, Mulder.”

“Really?” he says, head tilting to one side, and the grin on his face is the same one as the boy she had met seven years ago, “Because that’s just not fair, considering you get more and more beautiful every time I see you.”

And she laughs despite herself, “You’ve definitely gotten smoother over the years.”

“I’ll say. It took you long enough to realize I was flirting with you-”

“Asking if I believe in extra-terrestrials does _not_ count as flirting, Mulder-”

“Eh, it worked eventually, didn’t it? _You_ still fell for me.”

Scully’s lip twitches. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

When she kisses him, the glasses bump against her nose. By the end of the day, he has forgotten everything else that happened, aside from the feel of her lips against his, and the glasses folded carefully beside his bed.

* _Scully_

_Dana Scully. Dana Katherine Scully. Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully Dana Scully –_

_I have to remember her. I can’t forget her. I have to remember her. She has to stay. I have to remember her. I have to remember Scully._

_Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully Scully Scully Scully scully scully scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully scullyScully Scully scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully Scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscull scullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscull scullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscully scully scullyscully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scully scullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscull scullyscullyscullyscullyscullyscully scully scully_

*

Mulder was having a bad day. In the past week, he’d deteriorated fast, and he had been bed-bound for the past four days with a headache. Scully’s been there for two days without leaving, sleeping at his bedside. She’s the only one he lets near anymore, when he’s having an episode of memory loss and paranoia.

“Scully-” he whispers into the dark, “Are you still there?”

“I’m always here,” she replies, taking his hand. The chair at his bedside is starting to smell like her now, the amount of time she spends there, but she ignores everyone who tells her to leave – the nurses, skinner, even her own mother had been for a visit and begged Scully to go home and rest – but how could she leave him now? He needs her now more than ever.

“M’scared,” he says, voice small. “I’m scared you’re going to go. I don’t want to be here alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promises. “You sleep. It will make you feel better. I’ll be here the entire time.”

“I’m scared to sleep, too. What if I don’t wake up?”

He talks this way, sometimes. Fear creeps into his voice, and he talks about dying, but now it’s lacking the bravado he’d kept up for so long – it’s quiet, and it’s desperate, and it kills her. Scully runs a hand down his face and asks.

“Do you remember our case in Apison? In Tennessee? It was years ago now, but we met a girl called Melissa while we were investigating a religious cult. She told you that she had known you in past lives, that you – that you loved one another in past lives, and always met, but in some lifetimes it was only in passing. You underwent hypnotic regression because you believed her, Mulder – you told me about memories from past lives. I never believed. But maybe I was wrong – maybe this life is just one in a chain of lives for you.”

Mulder opens his eyes while she speaks, looking at her in the dark. She can just about see the reflection of the hallway light in his eyes, and feels his head shake a second later.

“No . . . that can’t be right, Scully. If I had other lives – where were you?”

“I was there sometimes, you said. You said – we were friends in all of the lifetimes we knew each other.”

“Just friends?”

“Why?” she asks, cracking a smile for his sake. “Think you’ll get _this_ lucky the next time around?”

There’s silence for a moment. She laughs breathily, but Mulder doesn’t, so the smile drops from Scully’s face. She reaches out to cover his hand with her own, asking, “Mulder?”

“You’re my friend,” Mulder echoes strangely, “And you tell me the truth.”

“Always,” Scully nods. She recognises the words. He is obviously trying to place them himself, his silence an affect of trying so hard to remember. She tries to help. “You said that to me, once. At the door to your apartment. You said that although everything else changes, that I tell you the truth.”

“. . . You’ll tell me the truth now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe?”

Silence fills the room for a heartbeat too long before she answers, but she needs to tell him the truth, especially now.

“I didn’t back then. I didn’t believe in a lot of things back then . . . but I want to believe. Now. For you.”

She feels Mulder smiling, feels it on his lips as he kisses her hand, the pillow rustling where his head moves.

“Thank you for telling me the truth, Scully. But I think that you’re wrong. I don’t think I could have lived any life where I didn’t love you.”

If she’d have known then that was the last time she would see him, Scully would have said it back. But time leaves everyone blissfully unaware that anything is the last time until it claims them, and so she leans closer to him and says instead: “Sap.”

And Mulder laughs, shaking the bed, and retorts that she’s the one pregnant with his kid, and they sit side by side in the dark talking until he eventually falls asleep. The next time he wakes, Mulder’s headache is gone, and he tells her to go home and rest. He smiles, saying that he feels better, and squeezes her hand before she goes.

Scully wakes hours later to a phone call in the middle of the night. It’s the one she’s been dreading.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Scully-” the nurse says, “It happened this morning. His heart and lungs just gave out, we did everything we could . . . He was very confused, towards the end. But he said your name. I think – I think that he would have been glad that he never forgot you.”

Scully can’t speak, just hangs up the phone. The line goes dead. In the darkness, she cries for the loss of the friend she couldn’t save, her partner, the love of her life –

The next day, Skinner drives her to the hospital. He tells her the entire way there that they don’t have to do this, that the bureau will make arrangements for Mulder – but she goes anyway. She has to.

His room is empty when she gets to it, and Scully doesn’t think she can bear to see Mulder in a morgue. He was always so full of _life_ – he doesn’t belong anywhere that cold and still. She doesn’t want to see him that way.

Instead, she stands in the empty room – and his stuff is still all there, clothes piles hastily on the chair, glasses on his pillow, writing on the desk – and finally, Scully knows. The words are for her.

“Give me a minute,” she says to Skinner. There’s a hand on her back, and then she is alone.

Scully walks over to the desk and sits, although she has to angle the chair to accommodate her baby-bump now. She picks up one of the pages and sees that someone – not Mulder, she would recognise his writing – has written numbers at the top of every page. Sorting through the mess, she looks until she finds number one, and begins to read.

_Scully,_

_This letter doesn’t seem like enough to explain everything to you. But I remembered that when you were in the hospital and afraid, you wrote a letter to me . . ._

Scully reads through the letters, tears in her eyes blotting out the words on the pages at times, but she persists, devouring every last words he has left for her. By the time she reaches the end, it is just her name, over and over in increasingly disjointed and confused writing, but she clutches it to her chest anyway. She can almost feel him in the room. It’s as if he had just stepped out, and would be back at any second.

“Oh, Mulder . . .”

A part of him remains in the letters, which she very carefully places into a box, putting his old glasses on top of the pile to hold them in place. But she doesn’t read the final letter – it isn’t for her.

*

_William,_

_Your mother told me she was going to name you for her father and mine, and I hope she keeps her word otherwise I’ll feel like an ass. If she named you something stupid like Fox Jr, don’t blame me, kiddo. I voted to name you after Skinner._

_I’m writing this out of fear that I will never get the chance to say these things to you myself. And although I hope that I will get to meet you – it’s one of the few things that keeps me going these days – I worry that I will not, and I don’t want to leave you with nothing but old stories to know me by._

_I must first ask for your forgiveness. I will most likely be gone before you ever remember me, and there aren’t enough words to let you know how sorry I am for that. I was a stupid man who thought that my search for the truth was the most important thing – but I was wrong. There is more to life than that. If there is one thing I have learned from your mother, it is that it is love , and nothing else, which makes life worth living._

_That being said – if you can look at the universe with more wonder than fear, then that is the legacy I hope you leave for you._

_There’s so much out there, son. And it is scary, and hard to find, and people will believe whatever is easiest and mock those who dare to seek a truth harder to swallow – but this universe of ours is also bigger than anything we could dream. More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, and all that. I hope that whatever paths your life takes you down, you choose to see it all with wonder, and with hope._

_Because that’s important too, and yet another thing that your mother showed me. She’s special in that way. Love her enough for both of us._

_Some advice: laugh as often as you can, fight for what you believe in – whatever that may be, and if you love someone, kiss them before it’s too late._

_And if you ever wonder who I was, just look up and ask. I’ll hear you. I promise._

_Your Father,_

_Fox Mulder._

*

Scully sits on a hill, a blanket of stars above her, and lifts the bottle of cheap beer in her hand in a toast.

“So, I gave William your letter yesterday – it was his fifteenth birthday. I don’t know when you wanted him to have it, but he’s been asking about you lately, and I thought it might help for him to have something from you. And finally got to read it myself, I might add. As if I’d name the kid _Fox Jr_ – I wouldn’t curse two generations of Mulder’s with a dumb name like that.”

Rolling her eyes at the grave beside her, Scully laughs. It turns into a sad smile on her face.

“He seemed . . . I don’t know. At peace, maybe, after. I think it helped. He misses you . . . I tell him stories, show him pictures, but I always wonder if he would be a different person if you were here. It feels so unfair that I got to spend so much time with you, and he didn’t get any.”

“. . . What else?” Scully leans back and hums, thinking. “Things are crazy as ever at the office. I spent most of last week in West Virginia because some tourist managed to get a blurry picture of Mothman. And I _hate_ camping, Mulder. I really do. We didn’t find much in the end . . . maybe you would have, I don’t know. You always have – _had_ \- a spectacularly singular way of finding the truth – or should I say, finding _trouble_.”

“Still – Agent Reyes enjoyed it enough, and I will admit it was peaceful . . . in between the running, and the shooting, and the rain. You’d have loved it.”

“The X-Files themselves are going fine. Our records are all digitised now, and I argued to have a five-year stature on all of our cases becoming public domain knowledge. The truth is getting out, slowly. But it’s out there now, for people to see, should they choose to look. And there are still men who would rather it stayed in the dark, but I’m still here, too. I’ll keep bringing them into the light for the both of us.”

Scully pauses. After all these years, its familiar, this graveyard. From the dandelions peeking out at the edge of his headstone to the way the weather has worn down the dedication under Mulder’s name: HE BELIEVED. She comes once a month at least, more if she needs to talk to him. She tells Mulder about her cases, about William, about the house she bought, about Skinner’s new wife. She tells him all that she can think to say. Everything he missed. She talks into the air, and hopes that he can hear her, somehow. And if even if he can’t . . . just talking to Mulder makes her feel better. It lifts a weight from her shoulders.

“William’s away for the weekend with Uncle Skinner, fishing at Lake Erie. I told him to watch out for lake monsters, but he just laughed – I still miss that damn dog, you know. And I mean Queequeg, not you.”

She cracks a smile. Mulder would have laughed at that.

“He looks like you, sometimes. William, I mean. He has your nose and my hair. He has your mind, too – he’s a storyteller if ever I met one. Draws these pictures, these comic books – wants to believe in heroes so badly, our kid. Guess that’s what happens when you grow up on stories of _the_ Fox Mulder.”

She chuckles, standing to brush dirt off her pants. Placing one hand on the grave, Scully strokes the stone affectionately for a moment, remembering warm skin on sunny mornings.

But it never fit right to her, to look at cold stone and think of him – instead, Scully turned her head skywards and looked at the stars above, speaking to them now. _Tell it to the stars_ , Mulder used to say.

“Goodnight, Mulder.”

Scully hoped that he was out there, travelling as starlight. She believed that he was watching over them somehow, and hoped that the stars were listening.

**Author's Note:**

> oops sorry this is sad, in my defence I asked my friend if it should have a happy or a sad ending and she voted sad, so this isn't on me. title from jack's mannequin's 'dear jack'. find me on tumblr @captainriphunter currently!


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